Eve of Poll Card

With Durham County Council not up this year, vote Labour wherever you have the opportunity tomorrow. 

Two years ago, the Mayor of London was a Conservative. Six years ago, that Conservative won his second term in that office. But in anticipation of this week's results, the Conservatives are already adding London to their long list of places where "We've never stood a chance, anyway", despite having run them in the past, and sometimes into the fairly recent past.  The absence of any Labour Councillors in Newcastle, or Manchester, or Liverpool, is often remarked upon. But there has been none for some years in Oxford, either. That's right. Oxford.

Overall, because these seats were last contested when UKIP was at its height, then Labour and the Conservatives are both going to make gains. But Labour is going to do so on both sides of what is in any case the rather exaggerated English cultural divide, sweeping the board in London while probably also taking overall control of North East Lincolnshire, which is Grimsby and Cleethorpes, and while possibly even taking Plymouth directly from the Conservatives.

The only danger to Labour is that it has expelled Marc Wadsworth, the man who introduced Doreen and Neville Lawrence to Nelson Mandela. Some 50 white MPs marched through the streets to demand Wadsworth's expulsion, in a scene reminiscent of a lynching. If Labour has not done all that well after all in the London local elections, then this will have been the reason why. Whether or not those MPs know who Wadsworth is, or why he matters, an awful lot of otherwise Labour-inclined London voters do.

But if Labour took control of Wandsworth, then Theresa May would be finished. Westminster would ice the cake. Kensington and Chelsea would put a cherry on top. In spite of everything, make it happen. With Durham County Council not up this year, vote Labour wherever you have the opportunity tomorrow.